Holy Week is the most sacred holiday on the Christian calendar. It commemorates the final revelation of God's nature for Christians. As such it is a holiday of public proclamation for the most numerous religion in the world. It is when all the wonderfully gruesome displays of salvation history are most visible.So why talk about the Rahner's anonymous Christianity now? Because it seems to be the polar opposite of Holy Week, but it isn't. I didn't intend to write about this but I opened the … [Read More...]

This is a guest post by Dr. Justin Tse of the Comparative Religion Department at the University of Washington. I am on the postdoc market myself and hope to avoid some of the problems he describes below: =================== Two of my journalist colleagues in Vancouver may have broken the Internet in Vancouver and Hong Kong. I am not a journalist. However, as an academic, I get the occasional interview from journalists, and I have learned that what it means to be a ‘colleague’ with a journalist … [Read More...]

Yesterday's post on the curious practice of ocular communion included a brief citation that Ann Astell excerpted in her Eating Beauty. That brief citation from Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture caused the most consternation, because it argued that in medieval practice and popular piety (lex orandi, lex credendi?) ocular communion was considered to be real communion, even superior to ingesting the Eucharist.Here is a much fuller bite of Image … [Read More...]

There are way too many silly debates on how to take Communion. Being a contrarian at heart I like to receive it in a way that the priest does not prefer. Receiving communion is the main point, not the manner, and to be honest most of them don't care. I do admire Katrina R. Fernandez for taking her stand for communion in the mouth during her grandmother's funeral. And if some of you think this is impious and I'm in the saying things in the wrong spirit when it comes to the Mysteries then you have … [Read More...]

Biblical references frequently remain abstractions until they collide with our reality. After opening Henri-Daniel Rops' Daily Life in the Time of Jesus and read ingabout locust eating I searched for (what else?) a youtube video (see below). That's when I realized that locusts are merely grasshoppers in their swarming stage.I've spent some time in Norway where they have unusual foods like reindeer salami (you feel a little like you're eating Bambi's mother) and whale steak. My paternal … [Read More...]

March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation. This commemorates the day when God took on flesh and made a mess of human thinking on a lot of topics. For much of ancient thought the body was the seat of evil. The goal was escaping the body into the realm of pure spirit where you could enjoy your soul in peace from all those horrible distractions caused by the body.Christianity took all that and turned it upside down. Here is Fabrice Hadjadj from an extended interview I'm translating for Ethika … [Read More...]

The Black Legend of the Inquisition persists because it takes popular opinion a couple of hundred years to catch up with propaganda. The Inquisition propaganda has its roots in the Reformation and Enlightenment polemics against Catholics. It was used as a foil to make those two groups look better in comparison with Catholics. Ideas have a life of their own independent of their origins, therefore the Inquisition persists to this day in various present day polemics.John Zmirak (for background … [Read More...]

John Zmirak is a Catholic intellectual of limited credibility. He has an MFA, surprisingly enough a PhD in English (the sort of thing a libruhl would have, although these days they give diplomas to just about anyone--I'm living proof), and recently became an armchair commando on the fart-right website World Net Daily. If we were talking about anyone else the latter development could be described as a fall from grace, but that's totally inappropriate here.Zmirak has wasted the last couple of … [Read More...]

I have this nasty little habit of reading several books simultaneously. The variety of my reading experiences spices things up by helping me make connections between several texts.Right now I'm reading Gadamer's Truth and Method, Levering's The Theology of Augustine, and Mosebach's novel What Was Before. After starting a blog series on atheism with the pieces Those Christians Who Think there is an Atheist Worldview Deserve a Tinfoil Hat and John Gray: Waiting for an Atheist Morality is Like … [Read More...]

The post "John Gray: Waiting for an Atheist Morality is Like Waiting for Godot" sparked something resembling a debate the last two days. Some of it was very constructive. Some of it was like this:The funniest thing about it, besides the racism (atheists aren't magically immune apparently), is how the anonymous writer is hiding behind a screen name derived from Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. It's funny because, first of all, Dorian Gray shares a last name with John Gray … [Read More...]